The embodiment relates to a gate driving apparatus for driving an IGBT (insulated gate bipolar mode transistor) in a power semiconductor system. More particularly, the embodiment relates to a gate driving apparatus having an improved output terminal structure for driving an IGBT in a power semiconductor system.
In general, an inverter is extensively used in various industrial fields, such as a field of a motor and various electronic appliances. The inverter is a device to convert DC voltage into AC voltage and includes a switching device and a gate driving apparatus for driving the switching device in order to DC voltage into AC voltage.
The IGBT is extensively used as a switching device for driving the gate driving apparatus. The IGBT is a transistor including emitter, collector and gate terminals, in which the gate terminal is insulated. The IGBT has high input impedance, so the IGBT can be readily and simply driven and minority carriers are not accumulated in the IGBT. That is, the IGBT is a switching device having the advantage of a MOSFET (metal oxide film field effect transistor) that operates at the high speed as well as the advantage of a BJT (bipolar transistor) that generates high current and is fabricated at an inexpensive cost. Since the IGBT has great input capacitance, the inverter requires a gate driving apparatus to drive a gate by amplifying current of a PWM (pulse width modulation) signal.
However, the gate driving apparatus according to the related art has the structural feature suitable for high output voltage and a chip size may be enlarged, so that the chip cost is expensive.